Hillary Clinton was a cheerleader, not a star player when it comes to the game of peace in Northern Ireland. So says David Trimble.

"I don't know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill going around... I don't want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player," he told the Daily Telegraph last week.

For even at the very top of the game, politics remains a very personal kind of business.

Bill Clinton was frosty to John Major when he became president because during his election campaign the Conservatives had rifled through MI5 files on behalf of his Republican opponents looking for dirt on Bill while he had been a student at Oxford.

When Clinton granted Gerry Adams a visa, Major returned the favour by refusing to take the US president's calls.

This latest spat is not the first time David Trimble has criticised a Clinton.

He accused Bill Clinton of having a "sentimental attachment to Irish republicanism" and implied that President Bush would be firmer on the issues of democracy and terrorism.

In his memoirs Bill Clinton describes Trimble as "dour".

When I interviewed the former president for The Politics Show I asked him about his relationship with the then Ulster Unionist leader.

"I did not have poor relations with that man, David Trimble," he said - or something like that - as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, crossing his legs and pulling his left ear.

If we'd been playing poker I'd have bet the pot.

After the formal interview, he lingered to chat about the state of the peace process.

It was July 2004 and the DUP was now the bigger of the two unionist parties following the 2003 assembly elections - and the Westminster rout was to follow a year later.

Mr Clinton was interested in David Trimble's recent criticism of him and made a few comments to the effect that if Bush was so good for Trimble, why was Trimble now leading the smaller of the two unionist parties.

As he left the room he leaned his head into the doorway and with a mischievous smile shouted back in that thick southern drawl: "And you tell old Trimble that I still like him." It seems the feeling is mutual.

On the Politics Show this week we assess the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement 10 years on.

Mr Trimble has tangled with the Clintons before

On Palm Sunday, we're in the ecclesiastical capital of Armagh and will be joined by Brid Rodgers, Arlene Foster, Conor Murphy and Danny Kennedy.